So, these arrived today:

These complete the bulk of my coursework for the next four months.  Of the lot are two plays, two books of poetry (which I am most pleased about), and two are verse-type narratives written in Anglo-Saxon language; of which one is Middle English (legible) and the other, Beowulf, Old English (illegible).

Now, The Lord of the Rings, which took the wind out of my sails when I learnt that I'll be reading it, will be studied contrapuntally to the other most-original books of literature.  To shortly sum up the trilogy's purpose: they are the contemporary response to the old – or rather ancient, even archaic, but surprisingly still relevant and evident in today's ways – culture and ideas (of religious, social, and cultural and and conversation). 

Here are very unprofessionally taken photographs of the Beowulf text and from the Canterbury Tales, to give you an idea of what's been contributing to my ever-increasing insanity.

To the right: Beowulf.  As of now, I've only seen its film adaptation.  I won't lie, I enjoyed watching it. (I am generally a read-the-book-first type of person, however, ahem, this occasion of medieval/renaissance lit proved to be the exception to my rule.)

To the left: Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  I am meant to read all these thousands and thousands of Middle English lines untranslated and convert it into my own understanding via poetry, or prose (which is quite a fun way of stretching one's imaginative muscles).                                                         One of my favourite prologues so far, to be honest, I haven't read many of them, is The Wife of Bath's.  Read it here, in English you'd understand: Wife of Bath's Prologue – If you have ever heard of proto-feminism (feminist philosophies before "feminism," prior to the 20th century), this is it.  And bear in mind too, this is centuries before Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, which is widely known and believed to be the very first subject matter of feminism in literature of the Western world traditions. 

There is a world of references in these texts at my disposal to use in my writing.  I am a born-researcher, so I am able to read one word and go on to discover a world of possibilities beyond its singular language, meaning, context.  I love that.  It makes for a long road of reading, watching, listening, observing, channeling... but it's worth the miles.  Now, if I could only find the time to write...